Can setting up a Domain Forward lead to sudden drop in Rankings?

[piazza]

Hi there,

Our website www.porcelainsuperstore.co.uk has been ranking on pages 1 and 2 of Google for the past 12 - 18 months for a number of our key search terms. There has been the odd fluctuation but nothing major.

On Wednesday of this week (2 days ago), we purchased the domain www.porcelainsuperstore.com and without thinking I enabled Domain Forwarding on this domain to go to www.porcelainsuperstore.co.uk
Today our rankings have shown quite dramatic drops, e.g

• Wood effect tiles position 1 to position 3
• Metro tiles position 9 to position 12
• Quartz tiles position 4 to position 9
• Floor tiles position 14 to position 25

Can anyone advise on this? Do you think the domain forward could have created this sudden drop?
I have now disabled the domain forwarding but am worried that this might be irreversible in Googles eyes?

I have now disabled the domain forward - I assume this is the right thing to do?
Any help much appreciated.

Thanks

Ben

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

Well, 3 spots drop in rankings is surely not "quite dramatic drop". It can happen for many-many reasons. What I would recommend though is to check if the domain name you have purchased ever had (or still has) penalty or spam issues. Usually, if everything is clean, it wouldn't affect your rankings.

As for irreversibility - nothing is irreversable. However, if that domain was in fact the reason of ranking drop due to spam issues, then it might take longer to recover.

Yes, disabling would be the first thing to try if you think that was the reason. See how your rankings react, if there are any sudden changes. However, I do recommend to check other factors like your backlink profile changes, content cnahges, your competition SEO changes and so on.

Hope this helps.